MC is an unreliable character- he thinks he's a fake genius but irl he's a broken ace who had a lot of personal issues that sent him to a deep slump where he lost all motivation to play until his only friend (and crush) decided to move to Florence, Italy to study in a local culinary school and he realizes he needed to lock in.... more>>

Beautifully written novel, the author has some poetic flare that I appreciate since it's pretty rare for k-novels. Although, this is a very slow-burn story that will frustrate impatient readers, so not recommended if you don't have the patience. 

The slowburn make sense in-story, since MC is convinced with his entire being that he is a fake and is having trouble to come into realization that he in-fact is talented and deserved to be called a genius. He just has very high standards (very Korean of him tbh) of what a genius should be- one of the characters (one of the genius kids) actually called him out for this pretty early in the story but MC has very thick mental debuff that he can't see through his own insecurities. <<less

MC is a former pro-league football player who was forced to retire at age 29 due to a sudden severe heart attack; to fill his retirement, he binge-read sports novels. After arguing (spiker vs defender) with the author of a novel he was reading, he transmigrates into the same novel and was given the task to (1) win the world cup and (2) win the ballon d'or as a defender or else he'd die.... more>>

Short and sweet at 130 chapters, with the premise I was expecting an easy 200-300 chapter story but I liked how the author didn't stretch the story and just let it end before they completely lost steam. Very fast paced story telling but still delivered a satisfying story <<less